


ghostin

by UchihaNaruto_2



Category: Naruto
Genre: KakaGai - Freeform, M/M, i didn’t tag as boruto because it’s literally only there for two seconds, this is supposed to be good
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-11
Updated: 2020-01-11
Packaged: 2021-02-27 14:41:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,240
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22208833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UchihaNaruto_2/pseuds/UchihaNaruto_2
Summary: How does one compete with someone who isn’t there?—loosely based on the song “ghostin” by ariana grande.
Relationships: Hatake Kakashi/Maito Gai | Might Guy, Hatake Kakashi/Uchiha Obito
Comments: 3
Kudos: 50





	ghostin

Gai wouldn’t have ever gotten Kakashi to therapy if he hadn’t gone, too. 

It was stupid, Kakashi had said. He just needed to drink more water, get some more sleep, pet some more dogs, eat better. He’d get over this. 

That was when they were 26, and Gai knew better.

He didn’t understand why Kakashi would want into the ANBU to begin with. He was at a loss when Kakashi refused to leave. 

It’s my purpose, Kakashi insisted. My purpose, as a ninja. To protect people. Covertly.

He was so, _so_ relieved when the Third finally let Kakashi go.

That was when they were 16. Gai knew Kakashi’s reasoning wasn’t true, either. He knew better. He knew that despite all the things Kakashi said, the true purpose of all of these avoidance strategies was to forget. 

To forget what happened the night his sensei died. To forget what happened when he’d accidentally killed his comrade. 

To forget him. 

Obito.

Gai was already hopelessly in love with Kakashi when he finally pried the story from him (there wasn’t too much prying, actually). Gai was 13, Kakashi was 12. It was summer. The sun was going down, and they were hiding. Back against a tree, Kakashi’s head was in Gai’s lap. Gai’s fingers were rifling through Kakashi’s hair in time with his breathing. Every hour, hour and a half, Kakashi would reach up to his eye, feel the scar running straight down his face. Gai would close his eyes and pretend not to care. 

Until it became too much. 

“Gai?”

Kakashi’s tiny voice jerked Gai from his thoughts about dinner and how much longer he’d be able to stay out here before his father wanted him home. 

“Yes?”

Kakashi shifted so that he could see Gai better with his one black eye. His mask was off, so that Gai could see his lips pressing together. Gai was the only person Kakashi did this for. 

“You never, uh. You never asked me how I got this.” A single finger came up to tap his hitai-ate, where his left eye was. Gai shrugged. 

“I didn’t know if you’d want to tell me.”

Usually, they didn’t keep anything from one another. As soon as something happened, they were rushing to find the other to tell them. But that was with silly things, or things of a much brighter timbre than this. Gai had learned not to pry about things that were dark. When Sakumo had passed, Gai didn’t ask. When Rin, when Obito passed, Gai didn’t ask. He tried to direct Kakashi’s attention to other things, like doing his laundry and eating. He was trying to forget, too. He didn’t want to know, if he didn’t have to. 

This was the same. 

A sigh so soft it could have been mistaken for the breeze. Gai’s eyes trailed over Kakashi’s face, over his scar. He’d started wearing his hitai-ate differently, because everything upset his new eye. The sun, the breeze, the cold. Kakashi was so sensitive. Gai’s heart flitted around wildly in his chest. 

“I thought I wouldn’t want to tell anyone. They think I… they think I did something, they’ve been calling me names. ‘Friend-killer.’ I—I didn’t want to talk about it, at all, because that’d just make people think they were right. But…” Kakashi’s fingers came up again, and this time they pushed at his forehead protector until his eye was exposed. The medical nin had seen it before; it was what Uchiha _do,_ they’d said. One man’s eye was another man’s treasure. Kakashi had taken a little longer than most to recuperate from it.

The eye glowed red, would always. It startled Gai, would always. It just wasn’t… right. Wasn’t the same. Wasn’t what he was used to. Wasn’t what he had fallen in love with. But, no. He wasn’t in love with Kakashi’s face; he was in love with Kakashi’s heart. 

“It hurts, sometimes,” Kakashi said. He blinked up at Gai a few times. His face was so serious, so _sullen._ He hadn’t done anything wrong. He’d done all he could. None of it was his fault. But, the way Kakashi told the story, it was _all_ his fault. The rock falling had been his fault, and he’d had no choice but to leave Obito there. 

“I abandoned him, Gai. He gave me his eye and then I left him there. And then, his last wish, I couldn’t do that either. I failed him, I _failed_ him.” Seeing Kakashi cry was at the top of Gai’s list of Things He Never Wanted To See. He closed his eyes and drew Kakashi up to his chest, hoping that at least, at the _very least,_ him being there would somehow put Kakashi’s mind at some sort of ease.

He wondered when Kakashi realized that he had loved Obito. 

***

They were 15 and 16 when Kakashi first admitted it.

Minato was gone. Kakashi could be found standing before the graves of his friend, of his sensei, and of the boy he’d never stopped thinking about. Sometimes he went and watched over the child, but Hiruzen had given him express orders to _not do that,_ so that was seldom.

Gai tried to give Kakashi space, but he was so worried about him. He was doing so well as a black op, _too_ well. He reveled in it all far too much. He so blankly would tell stories of killing people. It’s my purpose, he’d started saying. To protect everyone. To keep my promises for once.

“You know something?”

Gai glanced up at Kakashi, who was sitting on a branch in the same tree. They were both sweating after training themselves raw. Kakashi was a jounin, had been for years now. He was an elite, and yet he chose Gai as his training partner. His jacket was strewn beneath the tree. The tree itself was littered with evidence of their sparring; scars, gaping holes, slices, some shuriken that neither of them had bothered to retrieve yet.

Shaking his head, Gai shielded his eyes from the sun to see Kakashi better. “Tell me.”

Kakashi never took his mask off anymore. Gai missed Kakashi’s face. Not that he’d ever forget it. 

“I was thinkin’. Thinking for years, really.” Kakashi was examining one of his kunai, avoiding eye contact. Gai was patient. “I think the reason it hurt so badly when Obito died, I mean, besides the obvious reasons… I think that I liked him.” 

Gai froze where he’d been picking himself up to stand, and his hand fell to a fist at his side. He stood, after some effort, and forced himself to composure. “Yeah?”

Kakashi nodded slowly. “Yeah. Think I loved him.” 

And there it was. Hard to hear, even harder to allow himself to accept the knowledge that _he knew that._ He’d known it forever. 

“I think you did, too,” Gai replied. He stepped back when Kakashi landed in the grass in front of him. Kakashi had never been secretive. Gai saw sweat trickling down from Kakashi’s neck down to his chest, and then to a place that he couldn’t see. He looked up at Kakashi’s eyes—eye. 

Kakashi’s hand on his shoulder made Gai felt like he was going to shatter. “Same time tomorrow?”

***

They were both senseis when Gai finally mustered up the courage to tell Kakashi how he felt. I love you, easy enough, Gai told himself. He’d felt this way his whole life, what was saying it out loud one time? It was nothing.

But he was still terrified. 

Should he buy flowers? Should he challenge Kakashi to another test of strength? Write him a note, slip it in those books Kakashi loved to read? No. No. None of those things made _sense._

He found Kakashi in front of Obito’s engraving one morning. Mist was rising all around them. “I’m late,” Kakashi had said as soon as Gai came into earshot. 

“Late for what?”

“For the kids. They’re waiting for me.” 

“Ah.”

A long pause. Gai felt out of place. He’d only ever come here to visit his own father, and he didn’t do that often. Kakashi had a lot more reason to be here, to feel comfortable here. Gai hated the thought that he was interrupting. 

“What is it?”

“Eh?”

Kakashi turned to face Gai. “You never come here, and gods know you wouldn’t be here this early unless you came to see me.” In the faint light of the morning, Gai could see depressions under Kakashi’s eyes. He wasn’t sleeping, again. 

“Why are you so perceptive? Can you miss something for once, just one time?”

Kakashi chuckled. Gai relished the sound. 

“No. Tell me what you’re doing here.”

Gai sighed. “I’m here to tell you something.”

Kakashi leaned his weight on one leg and placed a hand on his hip. “Hm?”

“You told me, a while ago, that you loved Obito. Love him, I guess.” Kakashi’s eyes grew just the slightest bit narrower, but he didn’t interrupt. “I told you I think you did too, but I _knew_ you did. I saw it. Saw it instantly, from miles away. I—”

“Gai.”

He hadn’t realized he’d been fidgeting. 

“I came here to tell you, I love you. And that’s how I knew you loved him. Love him.” He kept correcting himself, only because he knew that something so visceral didn’t fade. 

Which is why he was so very surprised when Kakashi said, “I love you, too.”

Gai’s eyebrows drew together. Was this a joke, was it meant to be funny?

“How?”

Kakashi was smiling underneath his mask, Gai knew. His body was so hardened, so different than when they were 13, when they were 16, but Gai still knew every inch of it. 

“You’re the only person who’s ever cared about me more than I was supposed to care about myself. You’re always there, always. I know it was you who told the Third to let me out of the ANBU. I’m not stupid, Gai. You support me. And you… love me, in spite of me loving Obito. You’re brave. You’re incredible.” 

Gai gave the most tremulous of smiles. He nodded minutely. “I—Yeah.” Rarely was he speechless. 

“You need to get to your kids,” he said finally, after sucking his tears back and swallowing a sob. Kakashi nodded gravely. 

“Yes,” he said, “I guess I do.”

He was gone in an instant. And Gai was left there, standing in the haze of the morning, over Obito’s epitaph. He’d never taken the time to read it. 

He never would. 

***

Being with Kakashi was enough for Gai. Never mind that sometimes, he still woke up in a cold sweat, clutching Gai’s chest, mumbling, “Bi… Obito.” Never mind the fact that sometimes it felt like Obito was there, sleeping between them. Never mind the fact that Kakashi still, at _his age,_ found ways to weasel his way out of therapy sometimes, always saying something about showing Naruto the ropes of being Hokage. Never mind the fact that Kakashi would still visit his engraving, though now it was with a heavier heart. 

“All that time,” Kakashi had said one time, while he was making breakfast for the ninken. He’d spoken so low, Gai had assumed he’d been talking to himself. He was scanning a newspaper, still wet at one of the corners from where Bull had held it in his mouth. Naruto’s son wasn’t in the headline, for once.

“Can you believe it? All that time,” Kakashi turned around, the spatula still in his hand. Gai looked up from the words on the page to the maskless face. Face of an angel. Face of someone who’d never done any wrong. 

“All what time?”

“He was alive, Gai. All that time.”

Gai’s eyebrows rose. “Oh. I can’t believe it, really.” He didn’t want to think about Obito today. It was a sunny day and he was thinking of going to visit Tenten at her shop, get his fortune read, and then invite Lee and Metal over.

But here they were, doing this, _again._

Gai would do this for the rest of his life, as long as it kept Kakashi at his side. That didn’t change the fact that it was a gut punch to hear Kakashi say the man’s name, to bear the burden of Kakashi’s broken heart after they’d fought, and then made up, only for Obito to die again, for real this time. There was nothing tying them together now. No strange eyesplicing. Just thoughts.

Ideas. 

Wishes. 

Dreams. 

Nightmares. 

Whispers. 

Kakashi turned the stove off and when he looked at Gai again, his eyes were sad. “I know that it breaks your heart. I know that it breaks your heart to know that I loved him, love him, will love him. I know that it breaks your heart to know that I cry, and that I dream. I know.” Kakashi came around the counter and stood before Gai. Gai could see the wet of Kakashi’s eyes. 

“I know. And I’m sorry. I love you, don’t know where I’d be without you. You saved my life, Gai.” Kakashi put his hand out. His wedding ring caught the dull sunlight coming through the curtains. There were dogs everywhere, and outside was the garden Gai had begged Kakashi to let him keep. 

Gai took Kakashi’s hand and squeezed it. 

“It’s ok. I love you.” He gave a steady smile. 

“There isn’t anything else I’d rather do.”

**Author's Note:**

> here i am, once againnn sorry for the long hiatus. i’ve been writing something special to me and it’s taking me a while to get it right. meanwhile i wrote this in like an hour. i hope you enjoyed this, and don’t be afraid to comment and tell me what you thought! i promise i won’t take so long next time


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